Parenting Through Politics

“My eye itches,” eight-year-old Camille said one morning as she rolled out of bed.

“Scratch it,” I said without looking at her. It was a cool March morning, and my husband and I were headed out of town for the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis, where we were “working” the first Presidential straw poll of the 2008 season. Even though it was two years before the election, I’d spent the last few months trying to get people to vote for Mitt Romney. No, not Matt. Mitt. And yes, he’s from Massachusetts. People hadn’t heard of him, so I’d tried my best to persuade them to vote for him instead of any of a number of southern politicians.

“But it hurts,” she protested. I put down a bag of buttons that read “Romney – Yankee Governor with Southern Values,” and looked at her. Her eye was swollen shut.

My stomach sank. Pink eye? I’d planned to take the kids to school, and the babysitter would pick them up afterwards. I didn’t have childcare during the school hours, and I couldn’t send her to school looking like she’d been hit in the eye.

“Well, I guess you’re both coming with us,” I said, as I dropped medicine in her eye.

The next day, my husband and I found ourselves standing in a convention center, handing out tee shirts, pamphlets, and talking to anyone who’d listen about the guy we hoped would be the next President of the United States. “Mitt,” I’d say. “Like a glove.” The kids happily played behind our table, laughing and putting Romney stickers on their faces.

“Want to help me hand these out?” I asked my six-year-old Austin, who dutifully stood at a busy intersection near the main hall and handed out buttons. Because it was the first straw poll of that election cycle, the press corps was out in full force, and soon Newsweek had a camera on him.

“Who are you supporting, young man?” the reporter asked.

“Mitt Romney,” Austin nervously responded.

“Are you skipping school to do this?”

“Yes, he is,” I interrupted, “but Romney believes in education.”

That was when my kids were thrust into the political realm in which our family has lived in for the past seven years.

You did notice that Obama cleaned Romney’s clock, didn’t you? I’ve been waiting all this time to make sure that you knew. Cheers!

Agkcrbs

You deserve to come here and gloat, Gina, but keep it in perspective. Romney’s side lost about 3% of their votes from last election. Obama lost 12% of his. In the next few days, those who’d been holding their breath out of loyalty to a corrupt leader finally gasped for air. The stock market gagged, a hundred thousand or so jobs were shed in preparation for Obama 2, and both the CIA director and his own Secretary of State realised they weren’t going to get to respectably retire with him after all, and announced their resignations. It’s not so much that Obama defeated Romney — it’s more that Obama’s obedient press corps defeated you who hung on their words, swallowed their biases whole, and slavishly re-elected an obvious narcissist. It’s not fun to lose an election, but rarely has anybody been less ashamed of themselves to be on the losing side as we are now, seeing as how the worse man won.